my problem with atlanta

I live in a place where people pace back and forth through their lives when they should be dancing. The rest of the world glances our way and they call us hicks and rednecks over café au lait and an extra-dry martini. Because of our rather static social dynamic, my fellow residents in the city of Atlanta live in a world of tanning beds, soccer practice, and a six pack of Bud Lite to cap off the Sunday night service. It is a city of desperate insecurity.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that Atlanta is not a city at all. It is a network of cul-de-sacs, parking lots and Chic-Fil-A’s. Atlanta is a place that lost its way because we could not sit still. I heard it said growing up that Atlanta was “The City Too Busy to Hate.” In fact, it is a city that hates itself. Only in a city of self-loathing could call people to move from one house to another based on the demographics of the neighborhood.

I was a Kindergartener when I first fell in love. I would never be able to sleep during the compulsory naptime because my thoughts and my eyes would trail away to her and I would never be able to close either of them out. Somewhere, deep down in my tiny six-year-old heart, I worked up the courage to share my passion with the one I loved. But I fell flat on my face. When my grandfather picked me up out side of the school that day, he was an immediate witness to my despair.

-“What’s the matter, Jason?”

-“Shaniquah doesn’t like me!” And then there were sobs.

My demographics were skewed.

I cannot perfectly recall the timeline, but I know that it was not long before the house was on the block and we were driving around the outer reaches of the suburbs looking for a new home. They had lived in that house for 30 years.

A city cannot have a soul if everyone is moving around all the time. Children need to have roots bred into them from the carpet. A home should be a legacy, a temple. Where I am from, they cease to be homes and are merely houses. A flimsy edifice of sheetrock and scotch guard. This is why the people are pacing. Pacing in the early morning up the highway and back down again long after the sun has fallen over the western sky. Our heads are down like insects that love to play golf and only get in a round a month. We are working so hard because we don’t want a home; we want a bigger pile of sheet rock. A McMansion with a new and improved washer-dryer and self timed sprinklers. One life is no longer lived over the course of 70 years, but rather three or four lives. One life is spent for each house, each car, and each wife. One can never escape the past, they can only move around the perimeter. What causes the soul to break down into pieces? Why are we lined up like extra-value meals on a plastic tray and why on Earth are we not gathered around the table, serving the casserole and pouring our sister’s glass of wine? Why is the table from IKEA and why has it not been passed down through the generations?

We just wanted to feel alive. We wanted to sink a hole-in-one or a see the Grand Canyon or melt like ice in our margarita while we unwound on a long vacation at Grand Cayman or the Bahamas. It never works this way, I am afraid. We are taking our laptops along, our cheesy Bluetooth headsets and our unlimited text messaging capabilities. And by the end of the whole affair we come back to the water cooler and say that it was just “too short.” It was too short because we never slowed down to enjoy it. We never soaked in the time we had together. Johnny had practice at six and Annie had rehearsal at eight. The family meal was a Mom and Son in the drive-through and a Dad and Daughter with lean cuisine in the living room. They got through the meal in seven minutes flat! Can you believe it? These are the goals of the modern Atlantan family. We never really needed the vacation and we certainly didn’t need that night at Stone Mountain.

Stone Mountain. It is a family getaway for just one night. Parking for twelve dollars. A funnel cake (what is a funnel cake?) will cost you five more. A few slushies and some glowing necklaces and you have a night of fun. You watch a giant granite rock light up with the images of Coke and Kodak. All of a sudden you have an insatiable appetite for the Channel 11 News Team. How does this happen? You sit transfixed with the images of The Confederacy and The War of Northern Aggression. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson proudly march across the rock face in vivid neon green and pink while Elvis belts Glory Hallelujah, and I am arrested by something, but I no longer recognize it for emotion. How did we get here? How does this serve as entertainment? I believe that a night at Stone Mountain is like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer patient. The problems of sheet rock are sitting at the base of granite.

I want to grow up with kids who know my name. I want them to want to name their kids after me, not because I was an amazing man of the family, but because they knew me. They knew that I was real and that I could bleed and that I was not sure about the promises that the Republicans were dishing out or even if they believed it themselves. I want them to get bored with my stories and then repeat them after I am gone. I want my home to be a refuge against the pain that creeps in from being born into this world. As much as I can be, I want to be their vacation. I want to bring peace and assurance and deflate the pressure that everyone else will try to place on them. I want to reinvent the world around me, and leave its DNA soaked into the walls of our home for centuries. And for the love of God, may Stone Mountain never become a place of vacation.